Hindi Bible website launched

(February 17, 2010) Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal, India, launched on February14th, the first Hindi Catholic Bible website. The archbishop, who heads the Catholic Church in Madhya Pradesh state, described the website as the Church’s Valentine gift to Hindi speaking people, the country’s largest linguistic group. “The Bible is full of love and we need to spread it to everyone irrespective of caste, creed and religion. Christ’s preaching of love is for everyone and there is no boundary attached to it,” he said. The website www.biblemitr.com is designed to help a person complete reading the entire Bible in 47 weeks. It also allows one to send Bible versus as short messages (SMS) to Hindi mobile phone users. The prelate said modern life has become “too stressful” for all, especially those in the cities and “the right use of SMS with Bible quotes would help them address life’s burning issues.” The Bible Mitr (friends of Bible), a group of lay people and Religious, worked on the project for nearly a year, said its coordinator Father Francis Scaria. “We felt the need for effectively quenching the thirst of tech savvy Hindi speaking people for the Bible in their language,” he said. The priest also said his group has begun work on developing Hindi Catholic Bible software to cater to mobile phone users.